Developer: hoolis
Year: 2026
Genre: Arcade
System: DOS

Just a few days ago the full version of a DOS game called Europa Panic came out. A demo version was previously released for a jam last year and I enjoyed that so I was happy to see this full version come out. It’s a top down arcade game where you enter rooms of a planetary station to recover parts of a generator. After you collect all the parts in a level, you go to the generator and turn it back on. While you navigate the station you need to avoid or shoot enemies with your very slow laser gun thing that causes the enemy to slowly disintegrate. To make things even more difficult, if you take too long to complete a level you will see a purple tentacle monster appear and quickly hunt you down if you don’t exit the room very soon. The game is immensely challenging but also very forgiving in that touching an enemy will instantly kill you, but you do not need to restart the entire level, just the section you are doing, and none of the sections are too long. You also have infinite lives, unless you turn on the option to have a specific amount. The only real frustration I had was that the hit box is larger than it appears to be, meaning there were a few times where an enemy was not actually touching me but I died anyway. This only became an issue with a section in the 2nd level (there’s 3 levels total) that requires navigating some tight spaces with lots of enemies bouncing around, and once I completed that part everything went back to feeling very tough but fair.

I loved the game. While it’s incredibly tough and not the type of thing I typically play these days, I loved the huge amount of level and enemy variety in a relatively short (took me about an hour) game, and I have a soft spot for 16 color EGA DOS games. Plus it’s pay-what-you-want, so you can play it for free first (including in the browser if you have no interest in DOSBox) and pay some money after. Give it a look if you like challenging arcade games.

Europa Panic! is available for DOS on Itch.io